


Remember to Breathe, Breathe Me In

by emthecat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Denial of Sexuality, Dex gets outed and it isn't his choice, Dex is emotionally fucked, I am the angst queen hear me roar, I think I suck at tagging, IT ENDS HAPPILY I SWEAR OKAY, M/M, Nurse just went back to get his phone, Predominantly Dex-centric, unedited as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emthecat/pseuds/emthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dex isn't ready to come to terms with his sexuality publicly, and someone else doesn't seem to care all that much about it- and so begins The Day From Hell™ .</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember to Breathe, Breathe Me In

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is the second fic i've written for the Check Please! Fandom, and i'm not sure I know where the first one went on my computer (in fact I may not have saved it now that I think about it?). So please don't gut me if its terrible, I really like critique and I wrote this at 4am and posted it unedited so yeah... I WROTE FIC. Hope you enjoy :)

Just because Dex knew he liked boys, didn’t mean everyone else needed to know. It didn’t help that the first time Dex did anything with a boy it was a drunken hook up with someone from the soccer team who if possible, had the biggest mouth ever- because next thing he knew Dex was getting the strangest looks from the soccer team. Realistically he should’ve expected it, Samwell’s own Republican defenseman coming quietly out of the closet was a big deal, but he didn’t. The worst part was he still wasn’t ready to come out, even after it got out past just the boarder of the men’s soccer team. Therefore, his first reaction was to deny everything all the time, until finally someone got a little too involved in deciphering the truth.

“Yo, Pointdexter, I heard you got hot and heavy with the soccer captain at their party last week.” 

“And I heard you were having sex with that cute girl on the volleyball team, but I guess we can’t believe everything we hear can we?”

It was an automatic reflex, to deflect and hope his team was too distracted by the sick burn too notice his burning red face, or the way he only slightly hesitated to even try and chirp the guy. Almost letting himself lose the fight but suddenly kicking into a fight or flight that was essentially gay or straight- he chose straight every time. He just wasn’t ready to admit to anyone but himself, and he wasn’t sure he ever would be. The first few times this kind of line of questioning came up, his time shrugged it off like godforbid Dex actually like boys (he wasn’t really sure what label he was, so just “likes boys” was where he stood). Dex wasn’t even sure when he came to terms with it, all he knew was that somehow and somewhere he (sort of?) had. He blamed Nursey really, Nursey and his stupid face and his stupid “it’s okay to be gay” bullshit he had constantly spewed with the help of Shitty and God Derek Nurse made his blood boil, even if it really didn’t (but he would never in a million years tell Nursey that, the chirps would be endless and he couldn’t really take the heartbreak that went with it). It wasn’t until The Day From Hell ™ happened that the front had been dropped, and it honestly hadn’t really been a choice, he’d been outed and there was proof, and all hell had broken loose. 

***

There was music, loud music everywhere, as the haus shook not only from the sound of the music but the sound of the people yelling along with the excitement around them.They’d lost their game today, but he’d knocked a guy pretty hard into the boards today and it had stopped what would’ve involved some big-ass dick taking out Chowder- why would you even attack a goalie with a 3 point lead, what was the point? Dex was not on Nursey patrol for once in his short Sophomore life, he wasn’t in the best mood but that could be fixed, and was leaning against a wall enjoying some unpronounceable beer that he’d dug up from the bottom of a cooler in the kitchen. He watched as his teammates wandered around, chatting and flirting. He noticed Bitty hanging off Jack’s every word, he realized Lardo and a shirtless Shitty were basically on top of each other on a folding chair settled in the corner of the room. He could only glare when he clued into the fact that some douchey looking guy with a way too hipster-looking outfit that only Nursey could pull off was in fact attempting to flirt with Nursey (it wasn’t like Dex cared or anything, he couldn’t care less about what Nursey did with his free time at a party, ugh). He was silently preaching to himself how little he cared about Nursey’s flirting friend when suddenly a slightly familiar looking guy popped up in front of him, familiar and oh yeah okay attractive as hell. Definitely the distraction Dex needed from his not-a-crush-crush on Nursey.

“So, your Will Pointdexter right? Defenseman? You played rad today bro,” the lanky blonde guy in front of him said smoothly, punctuating his compliment with a fist bump.

“Oh, thanks dude, yeah, you look familiar do we have a class together or?” Dex continued to stare at this boy, trying to place why he looked so familiar was he in his calc class or stats or-

“I’m actually just a friend of uh, the really small one on your team? Bittle? He’s in a class with me and seems super chill and he invited me actually” Dex’s first thought was one of hope, the boy he now realized was lanky, blonde and hot as hell was friends with Bitty and god could only hope that meant he was interested in boys because Dex sure as heck was interested in his face mashed to Dex’s. 

“What’s your name, I feel I should ask since you know mine and uh yeah, your name?” Dex fumbled awkwardly on the sentence, praying he didn’t sound mind-blowingly dorky as he tried to make sentences happen in front of the once again, hot as hell boy, it had been a rough game and Dex needed to relax and some action with this cutie could definitely make that a bit easier to do. 

“James, James Howlie,” he said, shifting from the wall he and Dex were sharing. After what seemed like only a few minutes, but in reality it had been around half an hour the topic finally changed from the assortment of small talk they had been dropping and James had finally spoken up with 

“Do you want to go somewhere? Maybe a bit more quiet?” 

Do slap shots make a beautiful sound, Dex thought to himself as he guided them toward the upstairs silently thanking the hockey Gods for the pick me up he hoped he was going to get. Dex silently tried to decide whose room was the safest for this sort of a situation when he was pulled into the nearest bathroom, solving that problem immediately and lead to more silent hockey God praise. James roughly backed Dex up into the bathroom door and began to kiss him, there was no softness it was all need and passion. Dex had his eyes closed, pushing hungrily into the kiss desperate for some form of a release after the rough game, as his mouth fought the boy who with one hand had his arms pinned to the door. After several minutes of heated making out, hands flying James whispered hungrily into Dex’s ear “blow me baby, I want you to blow me.”

Dex, the eager to please and very aroused boy he was got right into that, ripping the button and the zipper on the god in front of him’s pants and began to work his way down his belly kissing and biting- his eyes were closed and he was into it mouth around James’ dick sucking and licking, he was in his own world. Suddenly there was a noise, it sounded like stop, and Dex’s immediate reaction was to do just that. He backed off, stood up to reassure him if he needed to stop they could but all he got was pushed off the door as the boy who’s dick he had just been sucking ran off as fast as he possibly could no regard for Dex or anything that had just happened. Dex was a little shocked, and more than a little bit concerned, running out of the bathroom to find the guy and make sure he was okay and talk to him… but it seemed he had left he haus. Not really sure what to do and in major need of some self care to his still semi-hard dick he decided to let Chowder know he was headed back to his dorm for the night. His entire way back all he could think about was what the hell he had done to scare the guy so much that he ran out mid-blow job.  
***  
The next morning Dex was woken up by the sound of banging on his door and the hard surface of his dorm room’s floor as he fell out of it. The banging continued as he tried to get a grip on his surroundings and check the time, which read 2:11pm on his phone. The banging still had not ceased and he no longer thought it was his head and yelled for whoever was at the door to “give him a fucking second” and got up to finally let in whoever the hell wanted to get a punch in the nose so badly. When he finally did open the door there was not one, but several members of the Samwell Hockey Team in front of him including Bitty, Ransom, Holster, Shitty, Nursey and Chowder. 

“Who died?!” was Dex’s first reaction, a panicked warble to his voice that no one had ever heard before and when no one said anything the panic got even worse “Was it my mom? IS MY MOM OKAY? IS MY FAMILY OKAY? IS JACK OKAY? WHERE’S JACK? WHE-“ until he was finally cut off by Bitty. 

“DEX, honey, no one is dead, but we need you to sit down. There’s something you need to see…” Bitty looked so concerned, he thought for sure someone was going to tell him the worst news of his life- and he wasn’t wrong he just wasn’t right either. 

As Bitty sat him down, the others gathered around him a mixture of anger, sadness, and concern laced in their features as Ransom handed him a phone and told him to sit down and to read what he had handed him. The first thing Dex took in was the heading “Samwell Defenseman Blows Big Time”. 

“Guys, I know I wasn’t fantastic yesterday in the game I think I can handle a little bit of criticism about my playing-“ 

“Keep Reading, Dex” was the only interruption he needed to begin skimming the article and that, is when The Day From Hell ™ officially began. The article consisted of a bunch of sources claiming that William Pointdexter was very, very gay and that his chances at the NHL had likely just dropped from slim to none. Will was only silently panicking because where was there proof? They had no proof! Until he got to the bottom, where a singular photo of him with his mouth on someone’s dick that was obviously screen capped from a video sat for the world to see. Anything genitalia related was blurred, but Dex’s face was there for the world to see- and everything suddenly got spotty, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move and then- it was dark. 

***  
“Dex, Dex, come on Dex, wake up!”

Groggily, Dex opened his eyes, there above him stood the same people who had come into his room only a short time ago with what may as well have been proof that his life was over. He sat up so quickly the room spun again, he nearly blacked out from that alone but someone was holding him steady, who he wasn’t sure but whoever it was couldn’t move or he might fall off the bed. There was another knock at his door, Bitty turning to open it and in walked Jack. He looked at Bitty, who nodded, looked at Dex with a rather too pitiful look on his face and finally spoke.

“It’s going to be okay Dex, we’re working on what to do right now, Murray and Hall are looking into the bullshit journal that posted the thing and-“ 

“It is not going to be okay, don’t you dare say that” Dex finally spoke, his voice cold as ice and dripping with venom. 

The thoughts swirled in his head, what were people going to say? Samwell was a LGBTQ+ friendly campus but even so his mouth was on someone’s dick and his parents, oh my god his parents. The look on his face must’ve said it all because Shitty finally spoke up and asked if he wanted to be left alone or wanted company, although alone wasn’t really the greatest idea in his opinion. Dex was still lost in thought, but he knew where this was headed and said he wanted everyone out, that he needed to think, that he needed to call his parents before all of this blew up and he just needed to breathe. He couldn’t do that with them around because he was scared, and as soon as they left he would be even more scared but he needed to do this alone. As the boys finally agreed and began to file out, the hand that had been supporting him disappeared and he finally realized it had been Nursey holding onto him for dear life in case he fainted again. Once everyone had left he stood up, and he sat back down again not sure what to do with himself until finally his phone started to ring and with dread he realized it was his home phone number on the screen. He tried to calm himself down enough to answer it, taking deep breaths and finally grabbing at it to make sure he didn’t accidentally miss the call coming in.

“Hello?” he said quietly into his phone, hoping for the best.

“It’s your mother” – oh no.

“Hi ma, what’s going on?”

“We saw the article, all of it”

“Ma, I can explain I swear I-“

“No. No we don’t want to hear it. We just wanted to tell you that we hope you hadn’t planned on coming back home anytime soon because as of now we do not want to be seeing you.”

“But Ma, please, I-“

“Goodbye, William, don’t try to call again because we will not be picking up.”

He heard the noise from his phone signalling she had hung up, and he sat there in stunned silence not really sure what to do with himself knowing he had essentially just been disowned. Oh my god what was he going to do, he already paid for everything himself but he also only had to do that for 8 months of the year and he didn’t actually pay rent and oh my god suddenly it was like someone had vacuumed the air out of his lungs he couldn’t breathe. He gasped, and he gasped and he choked on nothing as tears fell from his eyes onto his freckled cheeks soaking him because didn’t know what do to at this point except try to remember to breathe. Dex suddenly noticed the door to his room open slowly, and suddenly a really quiet ramble of “I just left my phone, I’m grabbing it and I’m leaving” and “I swear I didn’t mean to come back and bug you”. Nursey was trying to be as quiet and non-invasive as possible and he didn’t even turn to look at Dex until right before he left and he finally realized it was too quiet and saw Dex facing away from him on his bed, shaking, and struggling to breathe. Nursey dropped his phone where it was clambered over to the bed and pulled Dex into his arms, praying Dex wouldn’t hit him and proceeded to rub Dex’s back. 

“Dex, I need you to listen to my voice, breathe in when I count up to 7 and out when I count down from 5 okay? 1, 2, 3, 4-“ 

Dex tried to follow a very calm Nursey’s voice and regulate his breathing accordingly. Eventually after several sets of counting Dex was breathing at a sort of normal rate again, with just tears that kept coming from seeming like he was going to be okay. It was quiet as Nursey held Dex, just telling him to breathe slowly. Dex finally swallowed loudly and in a very small watery voice he proceeded to tell Nursey about the phone call with his mother. Dex could feel Nursey’s fists clenching tighter, his grip getting stronger as Dex explained his mother essentially telling him to fuck off and never speak to the family again. This eventually lead to Dex sobbing heavily, and Nursey having to regulate his breathing again so he didn’t hyperventilate for the next hour and a half. Eventually Nursey decided he needed to ask the big question, because if the situation was going to be fixed they needed to know where it started. Still in his arms, figuring this was the safest way to ask him, no one around to know but him.

“Dex, where did the photo come from?”

And so, it all spilled out. Starting with the liking boys thing, followed by the denial of liking boys thing, explanation of why he didn’t want tell anyone about the liking boys thing, how he lied about all the boys before, and finally about the boy from the party who he thought was clearly trying make a few bucks off the video. Nursey listened carefully, rubbing his back occasionally when he thought it might be necessary and it wasn’t until he asked Dex the guy’s name did anything really click into place. The guy who’s dick he had in his mouth in that photo was the guy he had body-checked into the boards to stop him from taking out Chowder in the game yesterday. Dex’s face drained of blood, white as a sheet, just stopped and looked at Nursey. Tears started forming again, and instead of Nursey grabbing Dex, Dex grabbed Nursey and he sobbed into his shoulder like he didn’t know how to do anything else at that moment other than grasp Nursey like he was going to float away from him. Dex eventually tired himself out sobbing, and started to lose consciousness exhausted from the drama of it all. Neither boy had noticed how late it had gotten and as he started to lay Dex down and extract himself from the other boy Dex froze, and in a small voice he made a single request.

“Nursey, can you stay?” 

That was all it took, he nodded, still extracting himself from Dex so he could take off the jeans he was wearing. He realized that Dex might not be comfortable with him sleeping shirtless in only boxers, especially after the chaos of the day, so he quietly asked Dex if he rather he borrow a pair of sweatpants to sleep in than to sleep without his pants on but as he turned to ask he noticed Dex was staring at him now clad in only his boxers and was waiting to throw covers over both of them impatiently. As Nursey laid down beside Dex, he prepared to give him as much space as in the single bed as a 6ft hockey player could give another 6ft tall hockey player but this was immediately abandoned when Dex buttscooted backwards into Nursey’s chest and stomach until they were spooning at an awkward angle that could only be fixed with Nursey relaxing into the position and wiggling them both into a good place on the bed. It nearly scared the bejesus out of Nursey when Dex suddenly turned around to look him in the eye, well as best he could with only the light from streetlamps outside the window as his guide. Dex opened his mouth to say something, only to close it quickly, and then open it again repeating this several times until finally he made actual words happen.

“Nurse, I don’t just like boys.”

“I’m honoured that you’re trusting me with that, bisexuality is totally valid”

“No, Nursey, I don’t just like boys in general, I like you, I mean, I like boys in general but I mean I like you a lot” 

Nursey just looked at Dex, as he realized what he had just said, and Dex scrambled to jump out of his bed in a panic because Nursey realized that fuck, he hadn’t said anything and jesus Christ he should say SOMETHING NOW. As Dex scrambled to get out of the bed and run Nursey grabbed him, pulled him into his arms and said to Dex, who was stiff as a board out of sheer panic because Jesus Christ he couldn’t deal with this kind of rejection twice in one day from the people he liked, no people he loved and suddenly, suddenly Nursey finally found words. 

“Dex, I don’t like you, that’s not possible,” Dex started trying to squirm out of Nursey’s arms again at this point because seriously, today was not happening and he was giving up and he didn’t know where he was going but good god was he giving up when Nursey tightened his grip and finally said to him “Dex, I don’t like you because I am so in love with you.” 

The squirming had finally stopped at this point, and with the look of a deer caught in the headlights Dex slowly turned over on the bed to look at Nursey, with tears in his eyes. Dex couldn’t find words, he could only find the energy to grab him and hold him as tears leaked from his eyes and Nursey grabbed him back. Holding on to each other for dear life at this point as Dex cried and Nursey held him and neither really knew what do until finally Dex came out from in Nursey’s arms and looked him and the eyes and kissed him so softly, that all Nursey could taste was the salt from Dex’s tears and all he could feel was their hearts pounding in synch as they kissed harder, and harder until Dex moaned and Nursey slid his tongue into his mouth making Dex moan again and finally, finally they came up for air. 

“Nursey, I love you too, oh my god do I love you.” 

The two of them finally so exhausted they could nothing more than hold each other finally curled into each other on the bed, fitting together like the pieces of a clasp on a locket. There was no sex that night, Nursey knew it wasn’t the time and Dex had barely held it together long enough to kiss Nursey so it was mutually decided that night was not the night. But in the future, their long future together there were so many nights of whispered words and names, full of moans and emotions that only they could feel. Because Nursey and Dex were in love, they had each other, they had their teammates, even after they graduated they had family who loved them and that was all that mattered. 

***

Dex’s parents didn’t come around, and that was always going to be a sore spot but in return Dex got Nursey’s moms who would have loved him even if he broke their son’s heart (they knew that wasn’t going to happen), they had each other and they had so many people who loved them and that was all that mattered. The article was eventually taken down after the news source realized both members of the photo were minors whether or not anything was visible and there were several law suit threats made very clear. Dex’s chances at the NHL were not in fact harmed once Jack and Bitty came out less than two years later creating the biggest kerfuffle Samwell Men’s Hockey had ever seen of a former player, and eventually once that died down several other top scorers from various teams proceeded to come out as well. Turns out the NHL was gayer than everyone really thought. The Day From Hell ™ is still just that to Dex, he gets over it eventually but it really hurts him knowing someone felt so much hate toward this boy that tried to end a career that hadn’t even really started yet. But, Dex always had Nursey and that meant so much to him that he knew anything was possible if it was possible he had gotten Nursey.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave me notes or whatever you do on AO3 - you can find me on on tumblr at dexs-freckles and emthecat.


End file.
